https://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/balloon_juice_header_logo_grey.jpg00John Colehttps://www.balloon-juice.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/balloon_juice_header_logo_grey.jpgJohn Cole2009-06-29 22:39:422009-06-29 22:39:42And Now I Understand the Value of Twitter

I’ve been describing Milbank’s work as “pap” for years now. But I think that “dick” describes his attitude perfectly.

He’s unreadable, even when he’s going after the pols I don’t like. It’s just such crap writing, superior and what I’m sure he thinks is “snarky.” But it’s just garbage and I’m glad someone has called him out on it.

I’m afraid of Twitter. The Twitter is everywhere and cannot be stopped. It’s on the buses and the trains, in the supermarket line, and is close when you take a shit. When you say yer prayers at night, Twitter is there. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until it’s message is delivered. Just ask Sullivan.

@Comrade Stuck: You betcha!
(Just don’t have the energy for contentious expressions of my personal opinion at this moment in time. People are gonna do what they are gonna do, right? Just because I think Twitter is a big old sloppy pile of lazy narcissistic doo doo that caters to the absolute most stoopid and lazy parts of tittering human beings does not mean it won’t appeal to some people.)

Olbermann just had a segment on Milbank, who apparently thinks that Obama’s calling on the Huffington Post reporter during his presser was the equivalent of Bush planting a ringer in a presser to ask softball questions. Olbermann said, “Come on, Dana, you’re smarter than that.” Somehow I doubt that.

SAN FRANCISCO—Creator Jack Dorsey was shocked and saddened this week after learning that his social networking device, Twitter, was being used to disseminate pertinent and timely information during the recent civil unrest in Iran. “Twitter was intended to be a way for vacant, self-absorbed egotists to share their most banal and idiotic thoughts with anyone pathetic enough to read them,” said a visibly confused Dorsey, claiming that Twitter is at its most powerful when it makes an already attention-starved populace even more needy for constant affirmation. “When I heard how Iranians were using my beloved creation for their own means—such as organizing a political movement and informing the outside world of the actions of a repressive regime—I couldn’t believe they’d ruined something so beautiful, simple, and absolutely pointless.” Dorsey said he is already working on a new website that will be so mind-numbingly useless that Iranians will not even be able to figure out how to operate it.

Twitter needs to be taken away from the islamofacisits and brought back to it’s previously useless, self-aggrandizing state.

People are gonna do what they are gonna do, right? Just because I think Twitter is a big old sloppy pile of lazy narcissistic doo doo that caters to the absolute most stoopid and lazy parts of tittering human beings does not mean it won’t appeal to some people.

I am officially going to use that as my answer any time someone asks me if I Twitter.

A young friend is going on a backpacking trip; he plans on tweeting the whole farking thing, which makes me sad. I’ve always thought backpacking trips should involve psychedelics and nudity, but that’s just me.

Honestly, the only reason I started on Twitter is because neocons were using it to spread misinformation. It reminded me of how they started using talk radio. I don’t want the 90s back, so I think Twitter needs a liberal presence in the same way that radio did. Otherwise, it’s just fun to beat up on them when you have some spare time…it’s more direct than a blog.

You are not having a good day Mr. Cole. I don’t see the difference between this twitter and Milbank’s work—except that there are fewer words.
Thus, you affirm the spiritual inheritor of Milbank for dissing….Milbank.

That’s how much Twitter sucks. It cheapens you even when you talk about how much you hate it.

One has to wonder if the editors and any other higher ups at older media organizations feel the same way that Milbank feels. After all, despite how much they can be bashed, most people would give up quite a lot to work for a newspaper like The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, or The New York Times. My guess is, Nico Pitney would probably love to cover foreign affairs for The Post, and the paper would love to have someone who could bring eyeballs to its site. Obviously, there’s only so many spots that one organization can fill, and not everyone is suited for the job, but there’s a lot of talent out there, and given the chance, I suspect a lot of people would find any change in address or affiliation would work in both directions.

And there’s the new version for fans of Obama, bitter — for those folks who think sending 140 bytes using a two-bit website is just too much, bitter reduces it all to an upperdown vote. Now, you too can follow Hamlet, Prince of Denmark, and other famous bitterers.

Twitter is different from this right here, this web page. People have to come here. If someone’s following you on Twitter, he’s always there. And then there’s retweets. Possibility for wide near-instantaneous dissemination. Since we refuse to be telepathic, this half-assed crutch to wholeness feels pretty good. I like it, although it gets kinda weird sometimes, what with everybody saying “goodnight” like at the end of a Waltons episode. Now that I wrote that, I think it’s a good thing, especially for those of us who were raised by all-American farm animals. What the hell.

If you follow the right people — I keep up with just a few — they can be an indispensable source of information. URLs, etc. My info pipe just got lots larger by choosing what to put in it. For my part (@TaosJohn), having little of measurable value to impart, I am focusing on art in 140 characters. I just made that up.

But John, if you do this, you’ll have thousands of followers right from the git-go. What an advantage, you must pick it up. Your traffic will increase. You can move to Tahiti. God loves you.

Twitter works well if you have an area of focus that you are interested in. I am in interested in medical research (especially stem cells) and special needs kids/education. Through twitter, I’ve found more experts and information then I would have with just google searches. However, there is still fluff to wade through, I just don’t mind because if I miss something I don’t feel it’s a big deal since it is more interests as opposed to work or immediate need for specific information.

Given their recent firing of Froomkin, it would seem the Post actually doesn’t care about having readers.

To be fair, Froomkin and Pitney are aggregators. They’re not doing any reporting other than filtering and passing along information. That’s different than actively seeking information and reporting it.

Not to say they aren’t (or in Froomkin’s case weren’t) doing an amazing job and a huge public service by doing so.

The best reason to be on Twitter is to watch the conservatards who love Twitter tweet confirmation of their barking lunacy on a semi-constant basis.

The reason conservatards love Twitter is because they distrust any concept that cannot be expressed in 140 characters or fewer.

Oh, and the Villagers. You must follow the fratboys of the WH press corps, the Chips and the Jakes and the Chucks and the Majors so that you can appreciate how they would remain oblivious to the fact that they were walking around with a meat cleaver stuck in their skulls if the WH didn’t issue a press release pointing it out to them.

And ol’ Dana is ‘working’ hard at it, as usual, they just need to note his accomplishments in journalistic dickery at Dickipedia. They must be overwhelmed with the number of dicks to list and just haven’t got to it yet.

I have friends on Twitter, and we sometimes have the craziest conversations that way when one of us isn’t able to be on IM software. Then there’s the Iranian election/revolution coverage, barring the random American idiot who can’t stop retweeting it. I also get to find out news about favorite authors, receive trivia from Stephen Fry’s Qikipedia feed, and find out about fires in my state as well as the weather.

Twitter seems utterly silly to me — however, I have signed up for one reason and one reason only: I’m terrified of someday becoming one of those older people who has absolutely no clue how to use current technology. It took me 4 days to teach my stepdad how to use a cordless phone, for pete’s sake — I don’t want to be in that position someday.

So, I figure it’s easier to try the new trends, even if I wind up discarding them, rather than having to catch up later when I’m hopelessly out of date and confused.

OF course celebrities and even big time Division I coaches nationwide are setting up Twitter accounts. Which they of course never look at, they have assistants to do that. And I assume their foolish fans think they are actually hearing from their idols.

Of course a couple days ago some hackers cracked Britney Spears Twitter account and sent out a message she was dead.

This turned out not to be the case and Twitter is rushing to close the hole in application that opened it on Twitter, so I suppose she will continue producing the magnificent and iconic music for which she was once famous. I say suppose, since I assure I will not be listening or purchasing it if she does. Just wanted to make that crystal clear.

Dana Milbank of The Washington Post, who notified us today that after four years appearing with us, he had accepted another television offer.
This saved your crack Countdown staff an increasingly difficult decision.

For nearly a week we’d been waiting for him to offer a correction or an explanation for his column from last week in which he apparently reported an Obama quote without a full context turned the meaning of the quote inside-out.

Then he called criticisms of his column “whines” even though the dispute was over whether Obama said the self-deprecating: “It has become increasingly clear in my travel, the campaign — that the crowds, the enthusiasm, 200,000 people in Berlin, is not about me at all. It’s about America. I have just become a symbol of the possibility of America returning to our best traditions” — or only the part about “I have just become a symbol…”

We had decided not to have Dana on this news-hour again until this was cleared up, and, sadly after some very happy years, he’s apparently chosen to make that cloud permanent.

John Conyers had quite a takedown of Milbank, and his absolutely shitty reporting, in a latter to the WaPo in 2005. It is quite worth the read, and I don’t know how Milbank can show his face in public afterwards . . .

@RedKitten (formerly Krista – the Canadian one): OMG, I never *could* get my mom or dad to learn how to even put a cassette in the VCR they bought and play the darned thing. But my dad knows everything, of course. When I was trying to show him, I was putting the cassette in and he says, “are you sure you’re putting it in the right way?” Hopeless, but of course, at their age, it really, truly doesn’t matter.

At work, I was the one showing other people how to do things on the puter, but I guess I’m stuck in time now b/c I personally hate cell phones and can barely operate mine. Cell phones take all the mystery out of life (& love).

Twitter’s great for stuff like tracking flood stage, hurricane updates, and developing stories.

I wish I knew how to filter out reTweets.

Republicans love Twitter because it’s one-way by default, like talk radio and blogs that have comments turned off. The Big Guy can tweet all day but not have to listen to feedback unless they’re “following” someone, which is probably never. Twitter is like the name implies, a bunch of people broadcasting at each other. It isn’t really a conversation, but it can come close sometimes.

Conservatards just love authority, so on Twitter they can follow their favorite idol and keep hitting that refresh button and get a jolt straight to the R-brain pleasure center, cruel mockery or howl of outrage, doesn’t matter which.